Usually, when JET ends, the war-weary soldier goes back to their home country with a nice ticket paid for by the Japanese government. I figure this is either a “thanks for your efforts” gesture, or a “hurry up and get the hell out of our country before you do any more damage” kind of thing. For some JETs, I lean towards the latter. At any rate, just the fact that JET pays for the return ticket home, kind of assumes that the retired school teacher actually does go home. While this is generally the case, there are a select few, thoroughly crazed and mentally unstable folks who decide that three years of Japanese torture *just* wasn’t quite enough.
Guess which camp I belong to, eh?
I won’t try to excuse my insanity, I’m fully aware of it. I will say though that there wasn’t anything in particular pulling me back to America, and I seemed to have a few good reasons to stay in Japan. So I did. A simple decision based on pros and cons. But, me staying in Japan would mean that I would have to find a job in Japan, for as you can imagine commuting to and from America everyday would not only be a bitch, but would be The Biggest Bitch in Human History. Even greater a bitch than Kyle’s mom. As Japan is the most expensive country in the known universe (I think even God gets taxed here – which is probably why the majority of Japanese people are Buddhist), of course I had to work. The Japanese government wasn’t just going to give me money for being in Japan. …Actually, wait, no, they did. It’s just that my time at JET ended, so now I was going to have to do actual work for less money. Bummer.